Miss Harrison talked on. He listened, and made the necessary replies. The carriage entered the city, crossed the Carraja bridge, and turned towards his hotel.
"Can you not come for half an hour this evening, after your engagement is over?" she said. "I shall be all alone, for Margaret cannot be there before midnight; she went into the country this morning with Madame Ferri—some sort of a fête at a villa, a native Florentine affair. You have not asked much about her, I think, considering how constantly you were with her last spring," she added, looking at him calmly.
"I have been remiss; pardon it."
"It is only forgetfulness, of course. That is not a fault nowadays; it is a virtue, and, what is more, highly fashionable. But there is one little piece of news I must tell you about my niece: she is going to be married."
"That is not little; it is great. Please present to her my sincere good wishes and congratulations."
"I am sorry you cannot present them yourself. But at least you can come and see me for a little while this evening—say about ten. The grandson of your grandfather should be very civil to old Ruth Harrison for old times' sake." Here the carriage stopped at his door. "Remember, I shall expect you," she said, as he took leave.
At about the hour she had named he went to see her; he found her alone, knitting. It was one of her idiosyncrasies to knit stockings "for the poor." No doubt there were "poor" enough to wear them; but as she made a great many, and as they were always of children's size and black, her friends sometimes thought, with a kind of amused dismay, of the regiment of little funereal legs running about for which she was responsible.
He had nothing especial to say; his intention was to remain the shortest time possible; he could see the hands of the clock, and he noted their progress every now and then through the twenty minutes he had set for himself.
Miss Harrison talked on various subjects, but said nothing more concerning her niece; nor did he, on his side, ask a question. After a while she came to fashions in art. "It is the most curious thing," she said, "how people obediently follow each other along a particular road, like a flock of sheep, no matter what roads, equally good and possibly better, open to the right and the left. Now there are the wonderfully spirited frescos of Masaccio at the Carmine, frescos which were studied and copied by Raphael himself and Michael Angelo. Yet that church has no vogue; it is not fashionable to go there; Ruskin has not written a maroon-colored pamphlet about it, and Baedeker gives it but a scant quarter-page, while the other churches have three and four. Now it seems to me that—"
But what it seemed Morgan never knew, because here she paused as the door opened. "Ah, there is Margaret, after all," she said. "I did not expect her for three hours."